Purpose
This research takes Nigeria and the healthcare prevention sector as a case study to describe the manner in which the non-profit sector is presently dealing with the challenge of communicating in a multilingual/multicultural environment. The intention is to identify the linguistic factors that affect the design of healthcare prevention interventions, indicate language strategies that are being used and potentially single out opportunities for improvement.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Two data sets were employed: the main one representing phone interviews with Communication for Development practitioners in the healthcare domain in Nigeria and a secondary one including online testimonials from the Here I Am campaign conducted by the Global Fund. The data collected was analysed following the Critical Discourse Analysis three-level framework. In addition to this, the micro level stage incorporated Grounded Theory Method to elicit thematic relations, and Semiotic Analysis and Discursive Analysis to determine the stance of the speakers.
Findings
Participants to this research perceived language and culture as two entwined concepts. Communication in the community’s local language was said to enhance message acceptance. The thematic analysis revealed that the strategy to be used, mainly translation or a combination of community interpreting and cultural mediation, depends largely on the level of literacy of the community. Of the proposed language strategies, training of bilingual individuals and a combination of community interpreting and cultural mediation appeared to be the two pivotal modes of interlingual message transposition. Pictorials are used in extreme situations.
Despite the dissimilarity of the two data sets used in this research, the discursive analysis suggested the existence of an aid beneficiaries/non-profit staff binary. The way of expression of aid beneficiaries and individuals working at grassroots level exhibited traits of dependency on other players (in this case donors and non-profit staff). Similarly, the discursive analysis of the interviews put forward that the non-profit staff interviewed tended to distinguish between themselves and Others (in this case, the aid beneficiaries).
This research found furthermore that translation and interpreting activities within the non-profit sphere are not always undertaken according to strict professional ethics and praxis.

In the context of significant numbers of Muslim newcomers immigrating to Europe and
perceptions of failed integration in Sweden, and in light of the urban conflict and
increasing debates about integration as a one-way or two-way street, this paper sets out a
“communication for development”-informed theoretical framework that focuses on the
struggle for social cohesion and immigrant integration in Malmö, Sweden. The paper
uses triangulation to view this challenging situation from various perspectives. Not only
does this reveal that unemployment and lack of power have taken their toll on agency
among migrants—particularly Iraqi men—but also that the strongest stories showing
immigration as an asset—particularly Iraqi women—are not being told in the media.
Through the use of empirical material from Malmö, this paper contends that participatory
communication in Malmö is less than participatory, and that integration in Sweden, in its
expectations, leans uncomfortably close to assimilation. The paper gives examples of
several development communication initiatives for integration that have had positive
results, with strong evidence that community media, as just one example, has proven
effective at improving immigrant integration. The paper concludes that development
communication initiatives show promise for improving social cohesion in Malmö, and
that these can be effective only if the choice to participate, and the choices of initiative,
medium and content are made by the migrants themselves.

Gideon Mendel’s ongoing photographic work documenting HIV/ AIDS, first started in 1993, has seen shifts not only in production but also in the author’s representation of his subjects. This paper looks at three texts of Mendel’s work, taken from three different stages of Mendel’s career and reads the shifting paradigm taking Mendel from photojournalist to activist armed with documentary photography as a tool of social change. This thesis explores how different positionings as an author and different representations of the subjects, living and dying, with HIV/AIDS influences meaning-making, and what that means for documentary photography as a tool of social change.

This Master in Communication for Development thesis –an essay- is based on two documentaries made with -and about- indigenous communities located in the North region of Argentina (the provinces of Misiones and Jujuy) which the author produced between 1997 and 2003 through the implementation of a participatory communication approach: Ayvü-Porä/The beautiful words (1998), and Candabare/Late summer celebration (2001). The essay is meant to be in itself a communication for development device: an investigation of examples, and a mapping exercise, intent at laying open and laying out the actual practices that led to the concrete products discussed.